Columbus Crew getting more attention from Lamar Hunt Jr.

Lamar Hunt Jr. has stepped up his involvement with the Columbus Crew as part of his family’s effort to better connect with the corporate community in Central Ohio.

Hunt is the oldest son of the late Lamar Hunt, who founded the Crew in 1996 and built Crew Stadium. Another of his sons, Clark Hunt, oversees the Crew as investor-operator and runs Hunt Sports Group from Dallas.

I talked with Lamar Hunt Jr. earlier this week as the Crew prepared for its home opener Saturday against San Jose. He told me he started to get more involved with the Crew about 18 months ago when his family decided it needed “a divide and conquer strategy” to oversee its various businesses. That includes the real-estate investment company he heads in the Kansas City area.

Hunt said his main focus with the Crew is assisting with corporate partnerships, including the club’s continuing quest to get a company to buy naming rights for Crew Stadium.

“We have had a lot of meetings with a lot of different people,” he said “but we have not had any full negotiations with anybody... We have a couple local champions in Barbasol, OhioHealth and some other sponsors like Cardinal Health. If we can get two or three more local champions, that will push along the naming rights as well.”

But Lamar Hunt Jr. told me Garber “misspoke” on the Hunts’ interest in selling the Crew. He said his family is committed to remaining majority owners in Columbus but would like to find what he called a “local champion” to take a significant minority ownership position in the team.

As part of that process, Hunt is working on explaining the team’s value to the community.

“We have a very good staff on the ground,” he said, “but we have suffered here from a lack of major league perception. I think that’s more about selling soccer to the community and the mosaic the Columbus Crew fits into worldwide – that we are part of something very, very big. I’m developing a talk on that about why soccer matters.”